This invention relates to a slide guide for a traveling flats assembly for a carding machine. The flats assembly includes clothed flat bars and at least one endless driving element such as a flexible drive belt for advancing the flat bars. The drive belt is trained about end sprockets. The flat bars, with their opposite ends, glide through a work zone on the flexible slide guides arranged on opposite sides of the main carding cylinder and thereafter return along an idling zone situated above the work zone. Each slide guide is composed of three successively arranged parts: an arcuate middle part extending substantially along the entire work zone and having a curvature generally following the curvature of the main carding cylinder and two end parts flanking the middle part and curved around the respective end sprocket to guide the flat bars about the end sprockets and to retain the flat bars in contact with the drive belt. The middle part will also be referred to hereafter as "convex slide guide", whereas the two flanking end parts will also be referred to hereafter as "concave slide guides". The convex slide guide and the two concave slide guides are independent from one another, and the convex slide guide lies on a likewise convexly bent supporting surface of a supporting component (such as a flexible bend).
In practice, the distance between the convex outer face of the convex slide guide, on the one hand, and the concave inner surface of the convex slide guide and the convex outer surface of the supporting surface (flexible bend), on the other hand, is uniform in the circumferential direction. The convex outer and the concave inner surfaces of the convex slide guide, as well as the convex outer surface of the flexible bend are concentric relative to the axis of the main cylinder of the carding machine. The flexible bend is provided with a groove which fixedly receives the convex flexible slide. To vary the distance between the points of the flat bar clothings and the points of the cylinder clothing, for example, because of an increase in the nep number and/or because of a fiber shortening in the carded web, the position of the flexible bend is conventionally varied by means of a plurality of setscrews whereby at the same time, the position of the convex slide guide is changed. As a result, the position of the flat bars together with the flat bar clothing and thus the distance between the clothings is changed as well. Such a new adjustment of the flexible bend involves significant technological outlay. Further, the geometry of the flexible bend depends from the number of setscrews. For performing such an adjustment, lateral carding elements such as drive, suction components and also the flat bars have to be removed and again reassembled after the adjusting operation is completed. During such a work which involves a significant assembly input, the carding machine is at a standstill and thus production is interrupted.
In a known device the convex slide guide is affixed at one of its ends to the flexible bend, whereby the convex slide guide is immobilized. The end of affixation is in the region of the beginning of the convex slide guide as viewed in the direction of motion of the flat bars. The flat bars exert, in the direction of their travel, a pulling force on the convex slide guide which may cause deformations. As a result, the quiet run of the flat bars in the transitional zones between the convex slide guide and the concave slide guides may be interfered with.